The monstrous creature towered over Lenora and Ada.
And towered. And towered. After a few moments of this, Lenora realized the monster had stopped moving. The flames in the images of burning books were no longer flickering. And beside her, Ada was frozen in place, her mouth opened to scream and her arms raised halfway over her head.
Everything had stopped. Everything except Lenora. She looked at her hands and flexed her fingers, then looked back up at the Board, wondering how this had happened and what she should do. And then she felt a presence behind her and turned.
“Malachi!” she cried.
For there stood the Chief Assistant Answerer.
The giant woman bent to one knee and reached down to take Lenora by the shoulder. And, for the first time Lenora had ever seen, she smiled.
“Yes, Lenora,” said Malachi. “Now listen, for we have very little time. The Library is in full revolt. But here and now, the Forces of Darkness are many, and we are very few. I am needed elsewhere. It is up to you to defeat the Board.”
“Defeat them how?” said Lenora with despair, for she had been sure that Malachi was here to accomplish that very thing. “I’m not powerful like you!”
“Really,” said Malachi. “Was it I who found a place of safety for librarians to gather their strength? Was it I who saved Zenodotus from the depths of his sorrow, and exposed the Director, and created a rebel army that waited only for your command to strike? You are more powerful than you know, Lenora. And remember, as always—your friends are all around you. I asked one of them to lend you this, in fact.” And into Lenora’s hand she placed an object.
Lenora recognized it immediately. Rosa’s device, the one they’d used to find the koala, and Zenodotus. But whatever would she do with this?
There was no time to ask. There was a blinding flash of light, so bright that Lenora closed her eyes. And when she opened them, Malachi was gone, and it appeared that she’d taken Ada with her, for Lenora was all alone. Except for the Board, who had returned to their human forms and were looking around frantically.
“What happened?” shouted the woman in the red raincoat.
The man in the green raincoat focused his gaze as though looking at something far away. “Librarians,” he said, shocked. “Everywhere, all over the Library.”
“That’s impossible,” spat the young girl in the long purple raincoat. Her tongue flicked out between her sharp teeth. “Where have they come from?”
“We must stop them—now!” cried the woman, and with three popping sounds, the Board vanished.
I have to follow them! thought Lenora. She gripped Rosa’s location device and pictured the woman in the red raincoat.
Nothing happened.
She thought furiously. What had Rosa said? I can locate anyone once I have their image. But the image in Lenora’s mind, of a woman in red, was of course not her true image. The woman had appeared as a huge, shadowy creature, too, and then again as a colossal dark nothingness. Lenora had no idea what her, or rather its, true form was.
If it even had one …
Lenora snapped her fingers.
The creature did have a true form. And it had been revealed when Lenora first met it. In fact, she had encountered this creature a number of times in her life, long before she had ever become a librarian.
And when Lenora had stood bolted to the floor, terrified, her words coming out in a squeak, she had remembered what Malachi taught her, and the creature had hissed and flinched, giving Lenora time to escape.
She gripped Rosa’s device. She closed her eyes and remembered all the times in her life when she had been afraid, alone in the dark when she was very young, on her first day at a new school when she knew no one, and that terrible day when her parents told her that her grandmother had …
Wind nearly knocked her from her feet.
Lenora opened her eyes. She was no longer in the Board’s chamber, but standing atop some domed structure high up in the sky, with wind gusting so terribly she had to drop to her hands and knees immediately to keep it from hurling her right off the edge. Terror surged through her as she thought, I’m going to fall, and imagined the horrible plunge awaiting her, even as she looked up and saw the woman in the red raincoat standing in the center of the dome, her arms raised, laughing. Lenora struggled to support herself on her trembling limbs, knowing she oughtn’t be afraid. But the wind was still forcing her ever closer to the edge, scraping the skin off her hands and knees.
And she would fall. She was sure of it. She’d fall, and with that the Forces would take over the Library forever. She had failed. She tried to summon the strength to crawl forward, but could not. She felt one of her knees go off the edge into open air, and then—
“Lenora!”
Haruto shot past her. The boy was standing on some kind of disc that hovered in the air and seemed to be powered by something in his backpack, but Lenora didn’t have time to think about that, for he was heading right for the woman in red, who shrieked and dodged, and for an instant her spell was broken and Lenora clawed her way back from the edge.
The woman recovered quickly and raced toward Lenora as Haruto flew in a circle around the dome. Lenora felt terror crash down over her once more. A moment later, the woman had Lenora by the arms, laughing, shoving her back toward the edge. But this time, she thought, I will not fall. Haruto will catch me.
The woman’s eyes flashed red in fury.
“I am not afraid!” shouted Lenora. “This is my Library, and my friends will always be here for me.” And now she began to push, hard as she could, and this time it was the woman who took a step back.
With a final shriek, the woman transformed once more, briefly, into a creature of pure nothingness—and then, as though she were sucked away through a straw, she vanished.
There was no time to celebrate. Lenora waved to Haruto, cried, “Thank you!” over the roar of his hover board, and gripped Rosa’s device. She remembered the lies the girl in the purple raincoat had told her. That Lenora had been fired, and Malachi had been devoured.
The windswept dome vanished.
Lenora found herself in a long, columned hallway, surrounded by a whirlwind of action. Everywhere, librarians were running up and down, some of them pushing empty bookshelves back into place along the walls or adding books to the shelves. Strangely, the walls were also covered with hundreds of signs that said things like:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
The phrases sounded like famous lines from a book whose title Lenora couldn’t recall. But there was, again, no time to figure this out, for these were lies and Lenora knew the girl in purple must be responsible. She ripped some of the signs from one part of the wall, then another, but when she turned back, more signs had appeared.
Lenora caught a passing librarian by the arm. “What’s going on?” she asked, gesturing at the signs.
“I don’t know,” said the harried librarian, who was lugging a box of books and looked quite weary. “We’ve tried tearing them down, but it’s no good. Please, Lenora, do something!” She hurried away with her box. Lenora watched her go, allowing herself one moment of pride at how hard her fellow librarians were fighting. Then she turned her attention back to the matter at hand.
She looked everywhere, but she couldn’t see the girl in purple. Patrons were gathering around the signs now, and some of them were beginning to nod. Lenora even saw a small boy writing in a notebook as he studied the signs.
How can they believe these lies? she thought. Then she noticed something happening to her, too. A tiny drumbeat in her head, repeating over and over, louder and louder: Ignorance is strength. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. IGNORANCE! IS! STRENGTH!
The lie began to make a certain sort of sense to Lenora. When repeated over and over like that, it seemed to become not a lie, but truth. She took out her notebook. And then—
“Lenora!”
Rosa came sailing toward her through the crowd.
“Rosa!” cried Lenora. Her wise and knowledgeable friend’s appearance caused the awful drumbeat to cease immediately. “Thank goodness you’ve come.”
“Malachi told all of your friends you would need us. What can I do?”
Lenora gestured to the signs again. “Someone is putting these up everywhere. They are having a very strange effect on patrons, and me! We need to remove them all and find her. I bet you’ve got an idea.”
Rosa’s helmet glittered in a way that suggested twinkling eyes. Rosa waved one of its many devices, and a whirlwind sprang up that ripped all the signs from the walls and gathered them into a spinning tornado of lies.
And in the middle of them stood a girl in purple, shock on her face.
She recovered quickly. Looking straight at Lenora, she said through her sharp teeth, “You have lost forever. Give up.”
But Lenora shook her head. “Your lies won’t work on me anymore. I see you for what you are. And know this—I will fight untruths wherever I find them, for as long as I’m able. And there will be others like me who fight your lies, always, wherever you appear.” Lenora knew this was true.
With a hiss, the girl began to transform into a dark nothingness. And then, as though she were being sucked away through a straw, she vanished.
“One more to go,” said Lenora to Rosa. “And then I can give you back your device. But quickly—why are you here? I thought you were meeting your spaceship.”
“My ship is stuck here for the time being,” replied Rosa. “The koala stole one of its parts!”
“That darn koala,” said Lenora. “We’ll get him someday! Goodbye for now.”
She gripped the device tightly, and thought once more of the hatred and rage she had felt toward the man in the green raincoat, and how she’d wanted to attack him …
The hallway vanished.